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Frorn Tectonicto Ornamen.t:

Towards a DifferentMateriality

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RCINVCNTING ORNRMgNTAmong the consequences of the suspension of traditional tectonicassumptions, one finds a spectacular return of ornament as something dis-finct from tectonic arliculation. Today's architectural omament does nothave much in common with the concept that prevailed before the dawnofmodernity, a concept that presented sculptural and above all symbolicdimensions. In conjunction with the new importance of surface, theomament is today generally conceived as an integral part of a pervasivecondition that brings it closer to a pattern than to a sculpted decoration.Sauerbruch Hutton's Pharmacological Research Laboratories in Biber-ach, Germany or Office dA's Obzee Headquarters project in Seoul aretypical of this reinterpretation. Even when the ornamental element isactually an image or a series of images, like on the fagade of Herzog &de Meuron's Ebenwalde Technical School Library in Germany, the over-all eftect is that ofpatterning or tessellation.

In the past years, an abundant literature has been devoted to thereturn or rather the reinvention of ornament. Among this production,a special mention must be made of Farshid Moussavi's and MichaelKubo's book, The Function of Ornament, because ofthe clarity with whichits states some of the assumptions currently associated with the orna-mental trend.3o The first assumption is that contemporary ornament isnot associated to a symbolic meaning exterior to architecture. In thename of a global culture that can no longer recognize necessarily localand particular symbols, Moussavi and Kubo particularly reject the post-rnodern obsession with historicist and vernacular significations. The cri-sis ofmemory that we just pointed out is also a crisis of some of its rec-ogrrizable ornamental markers. In direct connection with theperformalist trend at work in today's architecture, their second assump-tion is that ornament should actually be considered as a fully operative,or to use their vocabulary, a functional dimension of architecture. Oneshould, however, keep in mind that what they call function is actuallymuch broader than what was implied by traditional functionalism.

30 Cf. Farhid Moussavi, Michael Kubo,'Ihe Function of Omament (Barcelona: Actar, 2006).

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Even ifwe live in a provisory state of historical oblivion, is it pos-sible to totally leave the symbolic aside? In a penetrating article publishedin the spring/summer 2008 issue of Harvard Design Magazine, architectRobert Levit stresses the ambiguiry ofsuch a position.:1 Symbolic mean-ing, he argues, always comes back in a way evocative of the Freudianreturn of the repressed, and the attempts made to check it often lead to

31 Robert Lcvit, "Contemporury '.ornament': The Return oJ the symbotic Replii, *il"itr7iir:;;:tr x:r;;i;,

ttltivc tlttot:ttiorts of rt sornc:wltlttfictional culturel past likc thc irrtri-cate embroideries ofOMA's 2005NewJeddah Intemational Ailportproject or the moucharaby-likeskin ofSkidmore Owings &Mer-rlll's 2OO7 North Mosque inBahrain.

Moussavi and Kubo aremuch more convincing whenthey relate contemporary orna-ment to sensation and affect. Intheir book, sensation and affectare in their turn connected tothe growing importance ofmaterials and textures as defin-ing dimensions of contemporaryarchitecture. That ornament hasto do both with digital tech-niques and with materialiry isespecially evident in the case ofHerzog & de Meuron's recentwork. From the Basel Schaulagerto the San Francisco De YoungMuseum, ornament becomes apervasive surface condition, thevariations ofwhich are based on

levels ofpixelTization, a technique directly linked to the use of the com*puter to determine the grain of the materials employed.a2

The new link that has emerged between omarnentation and mate-rialiry may explain why ornament often appears as more foundationalthan traditional tectonic. Such a situation also accounts for the strangeimpression to be facing a giant jewel-like ornament that is conveyed by

12 l:or a penetrating study oJthat qilestion, see Rimi Rouyer, Architecture et Procds Technique: Les Figurcs tlc I'lrrrrgirr:rircI'hl) disscrtation, Universitb de Pais l-Sorbonne, 2006.

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Herzog & deMeuron, nightrendering ofNational Stadium,Beijing, China,Copyright Hezog &de l\,4euron.

a realizatior, like the Beijing olympic Stadium, as if the alternative tec-tonic order researched by Balmond was actually ornamental. There isperhaps no better illustration of the multifarious inversions betweeninfrastructure and superstructure characteristic of the contemporaryworld than this gigantic piece ofarchitecture whose real scale is blurredrather than revealed by random-looking oblique posts and beams. Itsprecious aspect is evocative of the similarly jewel-like appearance ofsome of the global maps of the Internet. 'Why not consider the Inter-net, or at least the web as a giant ornament?

In a world in which web pages and their design ofien matter morethan the hardware organization ofthe server that hosts them, ornamentconfuses the perception ofwhat is infrastructural versus superstructural,ornamental versus tectonic. Another theoretical essay by Farshid Mous-

s:tvi, '1 7rr' l:rutrtiort pf Iiorttt, r't'vt';rls tlrt'lirll s< opt'ol'tlrt't orrlirsrorr. Irr tlrrscssry, irrtcnrlccl lrs ,r sctyucl t<> 'l'lrc l;ttrttliort ol-( )ntttttrtrl, strtrt'trrr;rl IirrnrsIto lt>ttgcr:rl)pr:ar rs lr:llcl bcering, lu iurprcssit-lr rcirrfirrccd [ry tlrc sr:rplrit'codcs usecl to rcprcscnt thern.13 They are interpretecl in geornctric: tcrnrsstrongly renriniscent of those used by Moussavi to characterize onrrr-rnental effects and alIects. Ultimately, the function ofstructure seellls t()be strikingly similar to the function ofornament, thlrs making their partial mix-up unavoidable.

R DIFFCRENT MRTCBIRLITYThe term materiality that I have used already a number of times in thisessay dcserves at this point some clarification. To the unabashed posi-tivist mind, materiality seems to be determined by the sheer organiza-tion of the physical world, by the laws that govern it and rule the rela-tion we have with it as human beings. In this view materiality isobjective, based on nature and nature alone.

But the word nature should immediately make us cautious in anage marked by the proliferation of ambiguous hybrids of nature and tech-nology. For nature is partly a cultural construct bearing the mark of aspecific, historically determined vision ofthe physical world. This visionis partly shaped by our concrete experience of our environment, frorrrimmediate sensations to sophisticated scientific experiments like thoseconducted in the field of genetic engineering today. In that respect,nature is dependent on objective though changing factors. But the visionwe develop ofthe physical world is also perneated by cultural represen-tations and values. To give an example of the latter dimension, our early-third-millennium interpretation ofthe world tends to rely on the notionof information. According to this dominant paradigm, biotechnolo-gical creations are ultimately DNA manipulations analogous to decod-ing and coding practices.3a By contrast, the nature that contemporaricsof the First Industrial Revolution were dealing with had much nrorc to

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